Yours, Anne
Saturday, 30 January, 1943
Dear Kitty, I’m boiling with rage, and yet I mustn’t show it. I’d like to stamp my feet, scream, give Mummy a good shaking, cry, and I don’t know what else, because of the horrible words, mocking looks, and accusations which are levelled at me repeatedly every day, and find their mark, like shafts from a tightly strung bow, and which are just as hard to draw from my body.
I would like to shout to Margot, van Daan, Mr. Dussel— and Daddy too —”Leave me in peace, let me sleep one night at least without my pillow being wet with tears, my eyes burning and my head throbbing. Let me get away from it all, preferably away from the world!” But I can’t do that, they mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more. If I talk, everyone thinks I’m showing off; when I’m silent they think I’m ridiculous; rude if I answer, sly if I’ve got a good idea, lazy if I’m tired, selfish if I eat a mouthful more than I should, stupid, cowardly, crafty, etc. The whole day long I hear nothing else but that I am an insufferable baby, and although I laugh about it and pretend not to take any notice, I do mind. I would like to ask God to give me a different nature, so that I didn’t put everyone’s back up. But that can’t be done. I’ve got the nature that has been given to me and I’m sure it can’t be bad. I do my very best to please everybody, far more than they’d ever guess. I try to laugh it all off, because I don’t want to let them see my trouble. More than once, after a whole string of undeserved rebukes, I have flared up at Mummy: “I don’t care what you say anyhow.
Leave me alone: I’m a hopeless case anyway.” Naturally, I was then told I was rude and was virtually ignored for two days and then, all at once, it was
